PELOSI SAVAGED BY BUSH, MEDIA

Nancy Pelosi's trip to Damascus has been making wingnut heads explode. Michael Medved was truly unglued yesterday, arguing that she should spend time in jail for violating the Logan Act.

Sean Hannity was just as incensed and excited. Holy smoke! He's now convinced that the Republicans are going to do just fine in the 2008 elections because the Dems have blown it so badly in just a few months, and Nancy Pelosi "is a clear example of what happens when a woman gets in a position of power." Oops, Sean, I think you just insulted more than half the voting public, including a few prominent Republican women politicos (not excluding such conservative icons as Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, Condi Rice and Liddy Dole). You just bared your true misogynistic, female-repressing macho male soul.

But I'm angrier after listening to what are supposed to be genuine journalists repeatedly condemning Pelosi's trip and speculating as to the "damage" it's going to do the Democrats without once informing their audience that not only have numerous Republican Congressmen recently made the same trek to Syria and Assad, Pelosi's group included a Republican Congressman, and each member of her delegation explicitly stated that they affirmed Bush's own message. The hypocrisy evident in the Bush administration's and the media's attack upon Pelosi is appalling.

Yet the White House had no criticism of the trip to Syria by three Republican House members before Pelosi's delegation arrived there this week nor of Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), who visited Syria after Pelosi, Lantos and their colleagues had left. Pelosi's group included Republican Rep. David Hobson of Ohio and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the House.

Issa, who is Lebanese American, criticized Bush for failing to engage in the dialogue necessary to overcome the United States' differences with Syria.

The attention given to Pelosi since her ascension to the Speakership, and the attacks upon her, make me very, very susceptible to the notion that Sean Hannity's attitude is shared by a large portion of influencers. And that the nation -- or at least the media -- is "ready" for a female president only in that it is prepared to savage her for presuming to usurp a man's "power."

UPDATE: More here.

The real story here is 180 degrees from what the pundits have been preaching. While Speaker Pelosi has been in the Middle East letting Assad and others know that Americans are united in their support for human rights and opposition to terrorism, the right has been sitting on their couches, lobbing messages of division. While Bush was attacking her at home, she was supporting him abroad.

Just who should be embarrassed?